A photo from December 2023 of an F-35B at RAF Marham in England. The UK has now received all 48 F-35s orignially contracted, with further orders expected to follow. (Janes/Gareth Jennings)
The UK has received the last of 48 contracted Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning combat aircraft, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced in late March 2026.
The milestone came some 14 years after the first short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B was delivered to the MoD in the US in July 2012, and eight years after the type’s arrival at Royal Air Force (RAF) Marham in England in June 2018.
“The final Tranche 1 F-35B Lightning has been accepted, completing the UK’s first batch of the world’s most advanced fighter jet,” the Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) procurement branch of the MoD said, adding that they would demonstrate UK defence capability while flying from the Royal Navy’s (RN’s) Queen Elizabeth-class carriers.
With this delivery of the final three aircraft, the UK has 43 operational F-35Bs. Four are being used in the US for ongoing test and evaluation purposes, while one was lost in an accident in 2021. Deliveries were supposed to be completed in 2025, but delays to the wider international F-35 programme caused by problems with the Technology Refresh-3 (TR-3) update put this back by several months.
UK F-35Bs are flown operationally by the RAF’s 617 ‘Dambusters’ Squadron and by the RN’s 809 ‘Immortals’ Naval Air Squadron (NAS), while 207 Sqn is the operational conversion unit (OCU) also at RAF Marham. US-based testing is flown by 17 Sqn.
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